Chapter 48

After just a moment, the human shaped webbing stopped shaking and remained still for several minutes. Seeing this, Leo became curious and started to stride towards it while keeping an eye on his surroundings.

The last thing he wanted, was to be ambushed by an endless swarm of spiders. Without the tiger cub being able to assist him even with a small flame, it would be harder for him to deal with a large group of spiders, like those who climbed out of the webbings earlier.

Leo was unaware that the ten children of the Spider Queen, were now working on moving their troops to block all entrances and exits of this cave. If he knew this, he would have never even entered earlier. The ten children were indeed formidable, the child who was responsible for losing so many of their brethren, was only stopped in its tracks because a warrior almost at the executive level held him off while the rest escaped.

"There must be a reason that this webbing moved as it did once I decided to lay against it for a short period of time. Could it be, that maybe it is a human and not a creature that could kill me, catching me off guard?" he pondered as he started to withdraw a small iron dagger from his inventory that his friends gave to him.

"Well here goes nothing." Deciding to move forward and allowing his curiosity to take over, Leo delicately started to cut open the webbing that covered some type of creature. He was unsure what was within this webbing, but he started to imagine it being full of treasure or a beautiful young woman.

As he continued to slowly cut through the webbing, long human hair started to appear. This drove Leo to feel his face becoming a little redder. "If it is a beauty, I wonder what my reward would be by saving her?" he thought as he began to make his final incision near the person's face. Leo was still rather young even in this life, so these thoughts would appear in his head.

"No!" tears started to appear on Leo's face as he examined the person that was now in front of him. Unfortunately, it was neither treasure or a beautiful young lady, instead it was a middle-aged ugly fellow. Leo halted his movements before looking at the ceiling of the cave before saying something to himself.

"Why do you punish me like this!" waving his hands in anger, Leo then took a deep breath and recomposed himself. Right now, the last thing he needed to do was to delay any longer. Besides, to Leo, a middle-aged man might have a level of strength that could assist him with this mission of his.

"It looks like this older man is fully paralyzed, most likely due to the spider's venom. I should give him some of my antidote while there is still time for him to recover." Leo thought as he withdrew a bottle of anti-venom and let a drop of it into the man's mouth. Waiting for several moments, the man's condition was not visibly healing.

Not wasting any time, Leo started to finish cutting the webbing around the man so that he could properly carry him back to the waterfall area. He was not sure how long it would take to carry a man that far, but he was determined to question him once he recovered from his paralysis.

By this time, a spider near Leo and this man spotted them and rushed towards them to take Leo by surprise. However, Leo was prepared for this ambush long ago as he withdrew his powerful sword and slashed the spider dead with a single strike.

The smell of blood quickly surrounded the rest of the cave as the ground began to shake. Luckily, Leo already freed the man from the webbings tying him down. Grabbing him, Leo wasted no time and started to retreat towards the exit of the cave.

Every breath of time felt like days to him as he dashed forward with his full speed. Around him was an endless number of spiders swarming around the cave's walls. They spotted a meal and were not keen to allow Leo and the man to escape easily.

Pushing forward, Leo quickly located the exit and ran towards it. Right now, he had both arms around this man on his back and no weapons in hand. If he was attacked at any moment now, he would be injured or at the least pushed backwards.

"Just a little further, just a little further." Leo thought to himself as his head started to drip with sweat. He was unwilling to leave behind this man to escape, so he had no choice but to keep moving towards the exit at his full speed.

Even if this middle-aged man was on the weaker side, he still most likely had priceless information for Leo. Therefore, Leo had no choice but to bring him along and to heal him up using minimal resources at his disposal like a drop of anti-venom.

"Made it!" finally after running for a full two minutes at his top speed, Leo finally ran within the exit area. He was not going to slow down, but he was happy that his life was now in not as much danger as it was earlier.

Like this, Leo ran out of the dark tunnel until he made it completely out of the cave itself. Upon exiting, Leo passed two spiders with confused looks on their faces. Not paying them any mind, he dashed towards the waterfall area, losing the two spiders behind him as well as the rest who were swarming him earlier in the cave.

"That little human child seemed that he had some experience in battle. Do you think he is worth devouring?" one of the Spider Queen's children asked two of its brothers as its eyes began to fill with the desire to battle.

"A prey like that is worth eating, but we should only injure it and allow our mother to feast on that delicacy." One of the bothers replied as the three children continued spreading out their forces. Right now, all the spiders were filling the cave with webbing, making it harder for enemies to travel through it without them noticing.